Whose Desires?

1
Whose Desires?

• D. H. Lawrences
• The Blind Man

from England, My England, and Other Stories
(1922)
2
Leading Questions

• Characters Isabel, Bertie and Maurice. The story
  starts with Isabels listening for two sounds and
  ends with her receiving the two men, seeing one
  fulfilled and one defeated. How are Bertie and
  Maurice set against each other? What role does
  Isabel play in between the two men?
• Spaces and the two trips to the farm The spaces
  in the story are also set in contrast to each
  other. How is the farm different from the house?
  How are Isabels and Berties trips to the farm
  different from and similar to each other? (e.g.
  pp. 72, 73
• The ending What does the mens touching each
  other mean?
• Symbolic meanings the scar, light and (palpable)
  darkness, cat, touch, flower bowl, etc. (pp. 73,
  74, 77, 81-83)

3
Three Levels of the Story Possible Approaches

• 3. Main Argument the characters contradictory
  desires reveal the contradictions in Lawrence
  actually.

4
Introduction

• structure of the text
• 1. Beginning So Bertie was coming. . . 2nd
  par. Flashback-The background of the story(pp.
  68-71)
• 2. The Present time a. Isabels trip for
  Maurice in the barn (p. 71-)
• b. Maurice in his own room. (p. 75)
• c. Berties arrival
  Isabel (75-76)
• d. tea and conversation in the living
  room (77-
• e. Berties trip for Maurice in the
  barn (p. 80)

5
The Three Characters in Trouble/Need

• A. Isabel and Maurice, the couple (pp. 68-69)
• M a. self-sufficiency in his sightless and
  physical world
• With his wife he had a whole world, rich and
  real and invisible. (p. 69, also p. 70)
• b. post-trauma syndrome (depression)
• B. Isabel isolation, sense of burden and
  intimacy sees the coming baby as her salvation
  (still a mother, but becomes a lover rather than
  a loved object) nervous but maintaining calmness
  (p. 71)
• ? Beginning of action letter (p. 71) Let him
  come. worried about each other (75)

6
The Three Characters with Contradictory Desires

• C. Berties fear of intimacy (pp. 69-70 78)
• Maurice vs. Bertie sensitivity/slow thinking vs.
  intellectual quickness/emotional slowness.
• Isabel
• suffers to look at M in front of B.(78)
• despises and admires B
• Maurice There's a good deal when you're not
  active.'
• vs. Bertie. When there is no thought and no
  action, there is nothing. (79)

7
Symbols The Conflicts between Rational Mind and
Physical Senses

• Or in Lawrences own words mental consciousness
  vs. blood consciousness (note)
• Dualism in Lawrence and the underline parts this
  story
• blood/mind sensuality/intellect
• Dark/light Sun/moon animal (cat horses)
  /insect or flower arrangement Moisture/dry
• man/woman male autonomy and community vs. female
  possession

8
I. The Sensual man vs. the intellectual man

• A. Maurice and Berties Differences
• Occupationfarmer, lawyer
• Appearance Characteristics (in Is eyes) M p.
  74 B 78
• B. Their Ways of Talking to Isabel
• Maurice short phrases (e.g. 73-74)
• Bertie articulate but pretentious (75-76)
• Isabel feels divided, but confirms Ms
  something else (79)

9
Symbols (2) Spaces and the Two Trips to the
Realm of the Senses

• A. Is trip
• farmers house 72
• The stable p. 73, -- I afraid, stirred, wanting
  to see
• Isabels house 74 safe
• B. Bs trip
• M becomes more articulate, while B, shy, stiff
  and pretentious p.81
• Touching p. 82 ? What does this mean?

10
What do they each desire?

• The final touches
•  Maurice to know each other
• He welcomes it as if fate (p.
• Isabel
• To be left alone but she still has her womanly
  patience p. 71)
• Justify the communication p. 70
• a mother allowing the one son to be beaten by the
  other Im so glad
• Bertie to escape Would you be like Bertie?

11
What does Lawrence want?

• Story written around 1918
• between 1914 and 1918 wants to escape from
  England
• His increasingly poor health was exacerbated by
  the English climate
• There was the psychological pressure caused by
  the suspicions with which others regarded
  Frieda's German nationality and the couple's
  outspoken opposition to World War I.

12
What does Lawrence want? (2)

• Form a "Blutbruderschaft" (blood-brother
  relationship) with John Middleton Murry and
  Murry's wife, Katherine Mansfield at their
  cottage in Cornwall.
• The Murrys left because "were embarrassed by the
  violence of Lawrence's quarrels with Frieda."
• ? His need to set up such a cult makes him
  prejudiced against women and lower classes, using
  them as the Other in his symbolic system of
  belief.

13
Lawrences philosophy

• The brain is. . . the terminal instrument of the
  dynamic consciousness. It transmutes what is a
  certain flux into a certain fixed cypher. . .
  The mind is the instrument of intruments it is
  not a creative reality.
• Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious 247
• For the blood is the substance of the soul, and
  of the deepest consciousness. It is by blood
  that we are and it is by the heart and liver
  that we live and move and have our being, are one
  and undivided. (Apropos 111)
• The blood also thinks, inside a man, darkly and
  ponderously. . .

14
Lawrences philosophy (2)

• modern We always want a conclusion, an
  end.
• Primitive having mythical and symbolic
  consciousness.
• To them a thought was a complete state of
  feeling awareness, a cumulative feeling, a
  deepening thing, in which feeling deepened into
  feeling in consciousness till there was a sense
  of fullness. (Apocalypse 80)